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Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia

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Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia Cultural Contact and Diff usion Ivy A. Corfi s Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI, USA Leiden • Boston 2009 Th is book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Corfi s, Ivy A. Al-Andalus, Sepharad, and medieval Iberia : cultural contact and diff usion / Ivy Corfi s. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17919-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Acculturation—Spain—Andalusia— History—To 1500. 2. Acculturation—Spain—History—To 1500. 3. Culture diff usion—Spain—Andalusia—History—To 1500. 4. Culture diff usion—Spain— History—To 1500. 5. Andalusia (Spain)—Ethnic relations. 6. Spain—Ethnic relations. 7. Iberian Peninsula—Ethnic relations. 8. Andalusia (Spain)—Civilization. 9. Spain— Civilization. 10. Iberian Peninsula—Civilization. I. Title. DP302.A468C67 2009 946’.02—dc22 2009031414 ISBN-13 978 90 04 17919 6 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publicaton may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, pho- tocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization of photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Th e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rose- wood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Printed in the Netherlands CONTENTS Special Issue: Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia: Cultural Contact and Diff usion Acknowledgements ....................................................................... i Introduction: Ivy A. Corfis, Th ree Cultures, One World .............................. iii Articles I. Contact through Art and Learning Bernard R. Goldstein, Astronomy as a “Neutral Zone”: Interreligious Cooperation in Medieval Spain .......................... 3 Maribel Fierro, Alfonso X “Th e Wise”: Th e Last Almohad Caliph? ....................................................... 19 Harvey J. Hames, It Takes Th ree to Tango: Ramon Llull, Solomon ibn Adret and Alfonso of Valladolid Debate the Trinity ............ 43 Richard C. Taylor, Ibn Rushd/Averroes and “Islamic” Rationalism .............................................................................. 69 Dwight F. Reynolds, Music in Medieval Iberia: Contact, Infl uence and Hybridization .................................................... 80 II. Contact through Society Francisco J. Hernández, Th e Jews and the Origins of Romance Script in Castile: A New Paradigm ........................................... 103 Ross Brann, Th e Moors? ............................................................. 151 Th e page numbers in the above Table of contents and in the Index refer to the bracketed page numbers in this volume. vi Contents María Jesús Fuente, Christian, Muslim and Jewish Women in Late Medieval Iberia ............................................................. 163 III. Contact through Conflict Russell Hopley, Th e Ransoming of Prisoners in Medieval North Africa and Andalusia: An Analysis of the Legal Framework ...... 181 Justin Stearns, Representing and Remembering al-Andalus: Some Historical Considerations Regarding the End of Time and the Making of Nostalgia .................................................... 199 Denise K. Filios, Legends of the Fall: Conde Julián in Medieval Arabic and Hispano-Latin Historiography ............................... 219 Danya Crites, Churches Made Fit for a King: Alfonso X and Meaning in the Religious Architecture of Post-Conquest Seville ....................................................................................... 235 Index ................................................................................................. i Medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture Encounters in Confluence and Dialogue Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) i-ii brill.nl/me Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Program for Cul- tural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and the United States Universities, as well as the Nave Fund of the Latin American, Carib- bean and Iberian Studies Program for assistance with the conference and the production costs of this volume. I would also like to thank the Anony- mous Fund of the College of Letters of Science, the Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, the Ettinger Family Foundation, as well as the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, African Languages and Literatures, Art History, Hebrew and Semitic Studies, the Center for Euro- pean Studies, and the Medieval Studies Program of the University of Wis- consin-Madison for their support of the 2007 Conference, which was the impetus for this volume. Special thanks as well to Esperanza Alfonso (Uni- versidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain), whose recent book is a milestone in the fi eld and whose participation in the conference was fundamental; to the Organizing Committee (Ray Harris-Northall, Th omas E. A. Dale and Michael H. Shank) for their help in organizing and planning the confer- ence; to the Advisory Committee (Pablo Ancos, Steven Hutchinson, Charles Cohen, Paul Rowe, Jacques Lezra, David Morgan, Dustin Cowell, Uli Schamiloglu, Christopher Kleinhenz and Esperanza Alfonso) for their guidance; as well as to the program assistants: Stacy Bryant, William M. Rueter, Jason Doroga and Courtney Lanz. Th anks also go to Cynthia Rob- inson for her excellent supervision in the publication of the volume, and special thanks to the Editorial Advisory Committee (Th omas E. A. Dale, Michael H. Shank, David Morgan and Ray Harris-Northall), and addi- tionally and particularly to Pablo Ancos and Ray Harris for always being ready to listen, read and give suggestions for the improvement of this Spe- cial Issue of Medieval Encounters. Last, I would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce images from their holdings: the Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid, Spain), Biblioteca Nacional de España (Madrid, Spain), the library of the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, Spain), Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico (Córdoba, Spain), and the library of the University of California at Berkeley (Berkeley, CA, USA). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 ii Acknowledgements / Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) i-ii Without the help of many people, programs and foundations, too many to list here individually, the conference and this volume would not have been possible. Ivy A. Corfi s Medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture Encounters in Confluence and Dialogue Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) iii-xiv brill.nl/me Th ree Cultures, One World Ivy A. Corfi s University of Wisconsin-Madison Today, as in the past, al-Andalus evokes a wide variety of images and reac- tions. One need only “google” the term al-Andalus to see more than two million entries, ranging from art to dance, contemporary music and hotels to study-abroad programs; from festivals and blogs on history and culture to calls to jihād. Idealization of and a renewed interest in al-Andalus, espe- cially vis-à-vis its linkage to modern political events, is evinced even through television programming: e.g., the Public Broadcasting Service’s airing of the 2007 documentary Cities of Light: Th e Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain. All these recent views of al-Andalus and medieval Iberia remind us how very diff erent yet how very similar 711 is to 9/11 and 3/11. In any period, in any cultural confi guration, there are boundaries, whether permeable or not, visible or not: boundaries of belief, language boundaries, social boundaries of culture and religion, boundaries of gov- ernment and political rule. Boundaries are clearly mutable as they shift and change; and boundaries—either by crossing or respecting them—bring about contact of one sort or another: contact of resistance or tolerance, of reaching across or of staying within borders. Cultures meet without neces- sarily accepting or rejecting one another. Boundaries and their crossing need not bring about infl uence or contention, simply contact. In medieval Iberia, contact is usually discussed within the context of the three cultures: Christian, Jewish and Islamic. Al-Andalus, past and present, may evoke nostalgia for a lost paradise or golden age, but the exact dating, or even existence, of such a “golden age” is not universally accepted. Most scholars will agree that, if it did exisit, it included and centered around the Umayyads of Córdoba and the caliphate that ended in 1031. Th e “peaceful” co-existence of the three cultures, even within a golden age, is also subject to interpretation. In general, one can identify two major critical stances regarding cultural contact in Iberia. On the one hand, some © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 iv I. A. Corfi s / Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) iii-xiv scholars, such as María Rosa Menocal, maintain that tolerance was woven into the structure of Andalusian society, where the dhimmī (‘People of the Book’; that is, Jews and Christians), were protected under the Islamic rule of the caliphate, albeit with certain social restrictions (see, for example, Menocal 29-30, 72-73). It can be argued, then, that in al-Andalus Jews in particular lived with more freedom to participate in the political and social spheres than they did in Christian Europe. However, scholars such as Ber- nard Lewis and Mark Cohen argue that a golden
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